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Volunteer Employees

You can buy a person's hand, but you can't buy his heart. His heart is where his enthusiasm, his loyalty is. You can buy his back, but you can't buy his brain. That's where his creativity is, his ingenuity, his resourcefulness.

PC [Production Capacity] work is treating employees as volunteers just as you treat customers as volunteers, because that's what they are. They volunteer the best part--their hearts and minds.

The people I admire most in my working experience have been the ones who were excited about the work that they were doing. They treated their employment as more than just drudgery to be finished with each day, but as a challenge to be grappled with and enjoyed. In this quote, Covey seems to be getting at the right way to treat people so that they can flourish in that sort of work environment.

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